Artemis vs. Apollo Short Story Contest: Win $100!

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The Contest: Write a 5,000 word or less short story about the archetypes below.

Deadline: April 30, 2016, by midnight

Entry fee: FREE!

Prize: $100 Visa eCard

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The Archetypes

Artemis is the goddess of nature and wild things.

Apollo, her twin brother, is the god of civilization and culture.

As archetypes and Olympians, they have a lot in common.

They’re both superb archers, able to aim for a far off goal and achieve it, able to provide for themselves and others, able to protect themselves from afar without getting involved in anything hand-to-hand.

Both are known for their chastity. Neither Artemis nor Apollo ever partnered up with anyone successfully. At least not for very long.

Both prefer spending time alone, Artemis in the wilderness, Apollo in a far-flung “retreat” where nobody can easily find him. If the Ancient Greeks had skyscrapers, Apollo’s retreat would totally have been one.

Or they’ll spend time with a few select members of their own gender. Neither Artemis nor Apollo get along with the opposite gender very easily.

So they have a lot in common, and they have a lot of respect for each other most of the time.

But they’re also polar opposites.

As an archetype, Artemis represents the power of nature and instinct. She is the pull the human heart feels to run free, without rules or structure, expressing itself as it wishes in the wilderness.

As an archetype, Apollo represents the power of the human mind to learn and build things, to provide structure in which culture and civilization can flourish, and the artistic and scientific sides of mankind can flower.

In our culture, Apollo has taken over. We revere the power of the mind to master nature, break it down into its component parts, and bend it to our will. We value Apollonian science, logic, and reason far over Artemisian intuition.

So . . . what happened here?:

Clearly Apollo once had a strong foothold here. He built a grand city on an island.

And now Artemis has taken over.

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The Contest

Write 5,000 words or less explaining what happened.

Did Apollo give this land back to his sister out of the goodness of his heart? Did she take it from him by force? (Artemis does that sometimes, with things like earthquakes and other natural disasters.) Did she issue him an ultimatum, or did he lose the place in a bet to her? (They are both very competitive. I could see that happening.) What in the world could make the god of intellect surrender territory to the goddess of intuition?

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The Specifics

Deadline: April 30, 2016, by midnight

Entry fee: FREE!

Prize: $100 Visa eCard

I’ll judge entries based on:

— Word count. Please stick to 5,000 words or less. It can be much less, if you want. (I only have so much time to read entries, and it would be a shame to toss yours out because it’s too long!)

— Writing prowess. You don’t have to be Shakespeare, but just give it your best shot. An understanding of how to structure a story, how to use dialogue, and all that jazz will work in your favor. (Spelling, grammar, and typos count.)

— An understanding of Artemis and Apollo as mythological figures (a pretty good summary is what I shared at the beginning of this post.)

I can only accept 30 short stories for this contest.

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Send your entry to my email: HelloL@Mythraeum.com. Please paste your entry in the body of your email, since I won’t open attachments. The subject line should be “Artemis vs. Apollo Contest.” Please write your entry in English and in prose. You can email me any questions at the same address. I’ll have a winner by May 10. Subscribe to “Contest Announcements” at Mythraeum to see the winner.

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You don’t have to set your story on Hashima Island. You can use any abandoned area where nature is taking over for inspiration. Maybe it’s an entire city that Apollo has vacated, turned into a ghost town and overrun with Artemis’s wildlife. Maybe it’s an empty spaceship. Maybe it’s an old amusement park where vines are creeping all over the rollercoasters. Set your story in modern or ancient times, or in the future. Turn it into a Western or steampunk, or even do the Jane Austen regency version.

As long as you explain how Artemis got this abandoned area back from Apollo.

You don’t have to tell the whole story. You can write a quick vignette, or get as sweeping and epic as you can in 5,000 words. You can focus on Apollo’s point of view, or Artemis’s. Be creative!

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Mythraeum currently hosts six of this short story contests a year. In 2017, one of the winning contest entries will be chosen for production as a short film.

We’re already well into preproduction for our first short, titled HEAT. Casting is being finalized and we’re shooting in June 2016! Read more about that project here.

And be sure to enter your short story to have a chance to see it developed into a film!

Have fun arche-typers, and good luck!

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L. Marrick is an author, ghostwriter and suitcase entrepreneur, which is a hipster way of saying she travels and works from her laptop. She writes about archetypes, spirituality, and history at Mythraeum.com. Follow her on Twitter @LMarrick, and on Facebook.